Chapter IX


Belle Gordon

Belle Gordon was a Christian; she had learned or tried to realize what
is meant by the apostle Paul when he said, "Ye are bought with a price."
To her those words meant the obligation she was under to her heavenly
Father, for the goodness and mercy that had surrounded her life, for the
patience that had borne with her errors and sins, and above all for the
gift of his dear Son, the ever blessed Christ. Faith to her was not a
rich traditional inheritance, a set of formulated opinions, received
without investigation, and adopted without reflection. She could not
believe because others did, and however plausible or popular a thing
might be she was too conscientious to say she believed it if she did
not, and when she became serious on the subject of religion it was like
entering into a wilderness of doubt and distress. She had been taught to
look upon God, more as the great and dreadful God, than as the tender
loving Father of his human children, and so strong was the power of
association, that she found it hard to believe that God is good, and yet
until she could believe this there seemed to be no resting place for her
soul; but in course of time the shadows were lifted from her life. Faith
took the place of doubting, and in the precious promises of the Bible
she felt that her soul had found a safe and sure anchorage. If others
believed because they had never doubted, she believed because she had
doubted and her doubts had been dispelled by the rays of heaven, and
believing, she had entered into rest. Feeling that she was bought with a
price, she realized that she was not her own, but the captive of Divine
Love, and that her talents were not given her to hide beneath a bushel
or to use for merely selfish enjoyments. That her time was not her own